"When my firstborn was little I remember realizing that he was going to go through a range of emotions any given day with or without my intervention. I might as well provide boundaries for him to thunder against. I came to see this as my job, which might, I thought, protect him from being frightened by his own anger and wildness. His troubles weren’t great: he wasn’t allowed to touch the record player, he couldn’t eat a peach on the couch, he had to be quiet in church. But he railed against these setbacks and was as angry as if his troubles had been great. It helped me realize that my sometimes disproportionate emotional responses to the limitations of my life were normal and even healthy.

I was built to follow my instincts. My life is easier and my burden lighter than a mother octopus’s: she starves herself to death refusing to leave her eggs untended to get food. But our differences are less interesting than what we have in common: we are both bound to our children by instincts so powerful it often feels as if we are left without a will.

The thing I most clearly remember about being in labour with my second son is my husband’s body. I remember its exact smell, size, and proportions. I was floating somewhere, outside of myself, and his body, inhabited by him, was the thing in the room I understood best. Holding on to that body kept me in that room. Otters entangle themselves in seaweed so as not to float away while they sleep in the water. Every once in awhile, he smells exactly like he did that night, or I catch his body at the angle I held onto it then and I am knocked sideways with emotion. I am sure this is actually just a surge in neurochemicals in my brain, dopamine and adrenaline in my blood — but it feels like love."